Two Killed in Kurdish Militant Bomb Attack on Military Outpost

Members of the Turkish police special forces secure a street in the volatile Kurdish-dominated southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Turkey. Kurdish militants carried out a car bomb attack on a military outpost in southeastern Turkey overnight, killing one soldier and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, July 10 – Kurdish militants carried out a car bomb attack on a military outpost in southeastern Turkey overnight, killing one soldier and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia, security sources said on Sunday.

It was the second such attack within 12 hours in the mainly Kurdish region, showing no let-up in a conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and the state which flared up a year ago when a two-year-old ceasefire collapsed.

Ten soldiers and five village guards were also wounded in the attack by PKK guerrillas which took place in the Ercis district of Van province at 00:20 am (2120 GMT), the sources said. The army launched an operation to catch the perpetrators.

Around midday on Saturday a bomb attack on a similar military installation in the province of Mardin bordering Syria killed two soldiers and a civilian and wounded dozens.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, began its insurgency in 1984. Just in the last year, thousands of militants, security force members and civilians have died.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Saturday that senior PKK commander Fehman Huseyin had been killed in a bomb attack on a car in which he was travelling in northeast Syria. The report has not been confirmed.

Huseyin, a Syrian Kurd also known by the code name Bahoz Erdal, was killed on Friday evening as he travelled to the northern Syrian city of Qamishli, Anadolu said, citing a spokesman of a Syrian rebel group it named as the Tel Khamis Brigades.